A well-styled, illuminating startup guide.
The founder of MissNowMrs.com shares her insights on building and sustaining a successful business in this debut entrepreneurship book.
At 25, Tate, a top saleswoman for a large medical company, leapt to entrepreneurship, creating MissNowMrs, a site that streamlines the name-change process that she endured after getting married. Noting that her startup “developed at the same dizzying pace as my learning curve,” Tate intends this guide to “tell you all the things I wish I had known before I founded a company.” In 12 chapters, she outlines what she sees as the key steps in a startup’s life cycle, from testing the viability of the product or service (she provides an “Innovation Gauntlet” flowchart to aid in that process) and conducting business planning (pitch decks and SWOT— Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats—analysis are among the tools explained) to overcoming setbacks (including figuring out your refund strategy since “there is always a ‘percent dissatisfied’ ”). Each chapter ends with bullet-point “takeaways,” a further reading list, and a “How It Feels” section, with Tate offering tips on handling the emotional stresses of entrepreneurship, noting that “the concept of ‘no grit, no pearl’ applies…setbacks and competitors ‘irritate’ you into becoming a better entrepreneur.” She also includes inspirational quotes from businesswomen, including Ivanka Trump and Oprah Winfrey, and discusses how entrepreneurship is particularly empowering for women, allowing a better work/life balance, noting that her own son is now her “favorite startup.” In her introduction to this book, Tate defines “elegant” as “insights (right brain) that provide pleasingly ingenious and simple concepts.” While she is specifically referring to valuable entrepreneurial ideas, this term also applies to her overall primer. Tate provides helpful encapsulations of potentially dry and/or intimidating business topics (including pitch decks, Porter Five Forces Analysis, etc.) and an array of succinct stories highlighting her moxie and missteps, including using Twitter as the “backdoor” to reach an elusive potential partner as well as having to exit a flawed partnership that she ventured into beyond MissNowMrs. Tate’s female focus feels a bit wedged into this narrative, however, since her advice is largely applicable to both genders.
A well-styled, illuminating startup guide.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9970074-0-4
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Ten Eleven Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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